From their humble beginnings as free weights and bicycles mounted on wooden platforms, exercise equipment such as stationary bicycles, treadmills, elliptical fitness trainers, rowing machines, stair climbers, weight resistance machines, and the like have grown increasingly sophisticated. The mechanical aspects of these machines have markedly improved, with innovations such as adjustable platforms, variable resistance, and a range of exercising positions. Thus, today's exercise equipment offers users a wide variety of different exercise patterns; not only patterns designed to burn a specified number of calories or cover a specified distance, but also complex workout patterns such as interval workouts, course patterns, etc.
Unfortunately, many users find spending long hours doing repetitive forms of stationary exercise hard work and boring, sometimes so much so that the exercise equipment is abandoned in favor of something more entertaining. In an attempt to relieve the tedium of using such exercise equipment, users often utilize portable music playing equipment while health clubs have resorted to installing televisions for exercisers to watch. In the most sophisticated of health clubs, often walls of televisions tuned to various stations are installed in the exercise room. Users can tune into the audio of their chosen station on personal headsets.
While these systems help provide entertainment to exercisers, the purchase and installation of multiple large screen televisions that can be seen from a distance is prohibitively expensive. Also, the act of watching a television station surrounded by a wall of competing stations can be perplexing to the exerciser. Finally, the size of the televisions combined with the physical limits of available space means that, even with all the effort and expense the exerciser is granted limited choices.
Further, individuals, health clubs and other exercise facilities have varying needs, which often change over time. The needs of these different users vary based upon the available budget to purchase equipment, the space and technology in place to support the exercise equipment, fitness level, and interest level in audio/visual entertainment.
Thus, it would be advantageous to provide an exercise device that can be equipped with varying levels of features. For example, it would be desirable to offer various options of entertainment to exercisers. It would be further desirable to offer various options of entertainment to exercisers at reasonable costs. Further, it would be advantageous to provide a system that could be upgradeable to meet a user's changing needs, and to offer users more options and the ability to select an exercise device that best fits their particular needs.